Overview

We're happy to announce that the Bonner Network has received a two-year $180,000 grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to support our Serve 2.0 Initiative.  The Bonner Foundation has partnered with Middlesex County College to lead this grant. 

With this additional funding, we will be able to do the following:

• provide up to 10 mini-grants of $2,000 to support innovative ways to use social media to drive more and deeper student engagement — download RFP for Serve 2.0 Sub-Grants here.  Please note that this subgrant competition is only open to schools participating in the Bonner Scholar and Bonner Leader Programs.  Also, please review the Learn and Serve America Grant Provisions. 
• launch the Bonner Video Project which will provide Flip mini-camcorders to each campus that commits to making 2-3 short videos each semester and will include a Bonner Video Festival at the 2009 Summer Leadership Institute;
• expand the range of resources on the Serve 2.0 Resource Wiki (serve.pbwiki.com) and enhance our training workshops in partnership with Heather Cronk and the New Organizing Institute (www.neworganizing.com);
• utilize the expertise of Abby Kiesa and CIRCLE (the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) to lead our assessment and documentation related to this initiative.

Progress to Date

2008-09 Serve 2.0 Activities

The Serve 2.0 Initiative has already gotten off to a strong start beginning at the 2008 Summer Leadership Institute where all of you began updating your campus profiles on this wiki.  Just before this conference, we completed surveys of students and campus staff:

• Current results of student survey
• Current results of campus staff survey

Since then, we've begun to see the emergence of a number of campus-focused wikis that are beginning to serve as the online hub for their program management and information sharing (see profiles here).  We'll be reaching out to all of you to figure out how we can help you begin or expand your own Serve 2.0 efforts.

In October, 2008 we asked each campus to fill out an online campus profile survey to give us a better idea of where things stand on their campus (see survey summary here).  

We also requested that each campus identify at least one staff and one student to be the Serve 2.0 champions on their campus and be our primary points of contact for this initiative.

Finally, we awarded sixteen Serve 2.0 mini-grants and have received their 2008-09 progress reports.

Meanwhile, we're finalizing our mini-grant request for proposals and Flip camera give-a-way, so be on the look out for those announcements.  In addition, we'll be posting a job announcement early next week so please pass that along to anyone you think would be a good fit.

Resources

Please visit the Serve 2.0 Resource Wiki where you can find a whole list of social media tools and other information.  Check out the Campus Profiles of the Bonner Schools utilizing social media and who have sub-grants from this initiative to organize with one or a few partners around a specific issue, integrating social media.  Also see the Index of Bonner Program Wikis for a listing of schools' wiki pages.

Finally, if you have any questions or ideas, please contact me (rhackett@bonner.org) or Ariane Hoy (ahoy@bonner.org).